He stopped, searching her eyes for a flicker of fear, a pull-back, a sign of disgust. Instead, Felicity just tilted her head, her fox ears twitching with empathy.
"That would have been hard, huh?" she whispered. "Being the one everyone expected to be the monster."
Damien let out a breath he felt like he'd been holding for years. "Yeah, it was, so when the apocalypse happened, and I became a territorial snake... a creature that everyone hated and feared... it wasn't like much had changed. I was still a monster to them."
He reached out, his hand trembling slightly as he cupped her cheek. "Until I met you, you were the first person who didn't look at the snake and see a weapon, or fear."
The conversation shifted from the darkness of the past to the warmth of the present. They talked about the babies, Damien wondering aloud if she did have Exile's cub, would it be born in an egg or normally and would it have scales or be human-looking. He just hoped they weren't scared of him.
